Dealing with it
by MyopicDuck
Summary: My version of post Beneath You and mainly what's going on in Buffy's head


*Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters. Unfortunately they all belong to Joss Whedon. If they belonged to me Buffy and Spike would be having smoochies now and hopefully Joss has seen the inevitable light at the end of the tunnel and make this a fact.  
  
Dealing with it  
  
Buffy stood there, tears rolling down her cheeks, watching the tortured vampire draped across the cross and the smell of the acrid smoke greeted her sensitive sense of smell. A soul. He got a soul for me. Her mind had ceased to function after this revelation. God how fucked up is all this. It was the sight of the smoke that galvanised her into action.  
  
"Spike." It was a soft whisper and there was no response, perhaps if anything, he seemed to have grasped onto the cross tighter, more desperate.  
  
"Spike." Firmer, no non-sense about this, tone. It was a command. And still nothing.  
  
Buffy quickly covered the distance between herself and the odd Christ-like figure sacrificed on the cross. She avoided the area of contact between his pale skin and the cross and tried gently to drag him off of this unnecessary act of martyrdom. He refused to budge and Buffy pulled him off with more force.  
  
"Arrrgghh!" Spike muttered, his eyes glazed, as if uncertain where he was.  
  
"Spike?"  
  
"Leave me alone." He curled himself into the comfort of the fetal position and his chest was rising up and down and Buffy could hear the stifled whimpers.  
  
Time for action, thinking later, her brain muttered.  
  
"Okay, this is what we are going to do. You are coming home with me now and then we'll.. talk about this when you are feeling better." She waved her hand around, words cannot come close to describe exactly what 'this' is.  
  
He continued to whimper as if he hadn't heard anything.  
  
Okay, gentle approach. "Spike," she whispered as she knelt down beside him and reached a hand to touch him.  
  
"No! No touching!" His words reminding her of what had happened earlier.  
  
"Okay, no touching." She was dealing with insane Spike; insane, fragile Spike; insane, fragile, soulled Spike, who she had no idea how to deal with. Punches, cruel words, violence were not the key. And neither seemed to be gentleness. But one thing she was aware of and that was to move. The church was not a friendly place for any vampire, especially a recently soulled one. She found his blue shirt and dragged it over his head, forcing his limbs into each sleeve and then pulled him onto his feet.  
  
She looked into his eyes, all solemn. "We are going now Spike. Either the easy way of you walking out of here or the hard way of me carrying you out."  
  
As if a spark of the old Spike was still left in there, flared at the indignation of the last suggestion, he straightened out and muttered, "I may be crazy Slayer but I'm not an invalid." He wobbled on his feet and would have fallen if she wasn't there to catch him.  
  
~  
  
The trip back to Revello Drive was made in pauses. Spike half walked and half limped with the support of Buffy's body. She noticed he was having extreme difficulty in keeping everything on a tight reign, that an inner struggle was occurring right in front of her. She didn't say anything. She didn't know what to say. Her brain hadn't processed anything, hadn't had the opportunity to process anything. She was initially tempted to leave him in the church, but that sight of him, his emotions all naked, laid in front of her, on the cross, god she would have to be an even megabitch to have done that to him. And he was awfully quiet, not a single word out of him.  
  
They reached the steps of her home and walked into the living room where Dawn and Xander were waiting.  
  
"Buffy you are -. What's he doing here? What's happened to him?" Dawn jumped up, eyes full of curiosity at the sight of Spike.  
  
"He's.. " What?! Her mind asked. "Hurt." That will have to do. She was not ready and neither was Spike, who felt as if he had used the last ounces of his strength and was about to collapse in a most unfashionable manner. She quickly helped him to the couch and only made it in time before he crumbled onto it.  
  
"Get me some antiseptic, bandages and blood. Lots of blood." Buffy muttered as she lifted Spike's shirt off his abdomen. When she turned she found Dawn's and Xander's eyes full of astonishment. "Now! Please." She stated and heard Dawn off to hunt down the list of items she had requested.  
  
"Buffy."  
  
"Not now Xander, please." Buffy turned to look at one of her oldest and dearest friend. His eyes were full of concern and suspicion. He deserved an explanation. "Xander, I can't get into it with you now, but trust me on this okay. He's . hurt and this is just temporary until he's back on his feet."  
  
"It's Spike and he's been in worse situations." Xander complained.  
  
Yes, he has but you don't understand that I'm the culprit here and I can't ignore it this time. Maybe it's the guilt, but god whatever it is, I need to do this. She didn't say any of this to Xander because he wouldn't understand and there was no way she could tell them about the soul when she hadn't dealt with it herself. "Just trust me. I know what I'm doing and if I need help I'll give you a holler."  
  
Xander looked at her and the sleeping or perhaps the unconscious bleached vampire on the couch. He could tell by the grimacing look on Buffy that she wasn't going to listen to any advice. Her mind was made up and well, it was made up. Xander sighed. "Okay, Buffy, it's been a long night but I'll be around first thing tomorrow morning. If he does anything, use your head and your stake."  
  
Buffy nodded. "Thanks Xander." A quick hug between the friends and Xander left.  
  
Dawn came back, arms loaded with everything Buffy had asked for as well as a mug of blood. "What happened to him Buffy?" She asked, uncertain how to feel about the recent chain of events. It was all well when Spike was in full capacity, but when he's hurt, how is she suppose to react. Antagonism and making useless threats just seemed to be so pitiful and childish.  
  
Buffy continued the business of removing the shirt off of Spike and heard Dawn gasp at the sight of the burns on his torso and arms. Dawn handed her the antiseptic and bandages wordlessly, as the two Summers worked on doing the best patch-up job they could on the vampire. After they finished, they found a blanket and tucked Spike into his temporary bed.  
  
"It was a cross."  
  
"A cross?" Dawn asked, puzzled at Buffy's statement, before she added two and two and came up with a horribly burnt vampire. "Oh."  
  
Buffy looked at her sister who earlier on in the night was indignant that their recent closeness hadn't improved anything in terms of communication regarding a particular annoying vampire. She needed to know. "Spike." Oh god this is hard. Buffy swallowed and tried again. "Spike has a soul."  
  
Seconds of silence passed before Dawn exploded with "A what?!!"  
  
"Yeah I know."  
  
"Are you sure?? I mean, why? How? When?"  
  
"I'm sure and I don't know the answers to the rest. But I intend to find out."  
  
"So what are we going to do now?"  
  
We, not you. Buffy smiled at Dawn. Yeah, they were going to get through this. "I haven't figured it out yet but I think he needs to recover. And his sanity begs questioning at the moment as well. So I'm going to stay down here tonight with him, just to make sure everything is okay." Buffy glanced at the watch. Almost midnight. "You better get to bed Dawn, you still have school tomorrow and I, god, I have to go to work."  
  
"Buffy are you sure? I can stay down here with you if you like."  
  
"Dawn, I'm sure. And I need some Buffy time to process all this. But thanks for offering sis." She stood up and hugged Dawn before giving her a kiss on the forehead as the young Summers headed upstairs to the sanctuary of her room. Buffy grabbed some more blankets and pillows from her hallway closet and made herself comfortable, or as comfortable as she could get, in the other single seater. She dimmed the lights and watched the unconscious vampire.  
  
It was quiet, so quiet. God did today just happen? She wondered. Did the past week just happen? From finding Spike, with his roots in full glory down in the school basement to him back to being his snarky big bad self in the Bronze and the fear at the very distinct possibility that she might have to stake him, to .. to his soul. His words came back to haunt her.  
  
"Get the flesh hard, service the girl."  
  
His defeated tone. Buffy chewed her lower lip. Spike may be many things but defeat, defeat does not sit on him well. She doesn't like the defeat. And she put him there. Tears rolled down her cheek. Last year was just a mess. She had no idea what she wanted after having been pulled out of heaven. And Spike, he was there, he helped. She used him, she can admit that now, used the fact that he loved her unconditionally, to help her feel. She didn't think at all about it had affected him. It was all about how it made her feel, alive for those intense moments of passion, and then only self disgust afterwards, which was all projected out to him. Projection, didn't she learn about all this during her psych classes? And then the rape, the almost rape. She thought that was the icing on the cake, but oh no, not even close. Now, a soulled vampire. A soulled, broken vampire, grasping onto his sanity by mere threads. That is the icing on the top.  
  
So many questions flooded her mind. The soul. Why? How? When? Where? And . why didn't Angel get a soul for her? Spike. Who is he now? What is he capable of? How is he going to go on? His sanity? And finally, does he still love her? Then Buffy, herself, her biggest enemy. How is she going to cope with all this? Does she want to cope? How does she feel about all this? And finally, how does she feel about him?  
  
She looked at him again. God he is so beautiful and peaceful, lying there. She could allow herself to think this way about him when no one is there. She could allow herself now, now that she's had the summer to mull things over and not condemn herself for these kind of thoughts. Over the summer she had accepted that what happened between her and Spike was real and unhealthy. God they were fucked up, that's the only way to describe it. She was majorly screwed up in her head and Spike, he wasn't in a better place. She thought she had moved on, moved on with her life, helping Dawn. Then she's back where she had started, except this time, she's seeing things clearer, this time she's seeing full stop. Seeing the mistakes she made, the pain she felt and the pain she inflicted. Seeing the consequences, seeing the ugly and the horror in all their magnificent colours. The Buffy she was last year made her feel sick, the self disgust of what she had done to herself and to Spike, to leave him in a mere shell of what he was truly capable of. She had ignored all his pleas, all his actions during her time of absence in heaven, and instead chose to see him as a chipped vampire, beneath her, only good in getting rid of an itch, and nothing more. God, she treated him the way Parker had treated her, probably even worse. And he went out and, got a soul for her. Sobs were catching up with Buffy by now as tears rolled down effortlessly down her already drenched cheeks. She was crying for her, for him, for all everything that had happened.  
  
He needed to get better and then they deal. He'll have to deal and she'll have to deal. No choices, no outs. This semi-formed plan offered her some small amount of comfort and she was able to briefly shut her eyes.  
  
The next time Buffy opened her eyes, it was morning. The clock read 6am. She quickly glanced at the sofa bed but knew he was gone before she saw the proof. A note was next to the empty mug.  
  
Thanks for the blood Slayer.  
  
She smiled. The sunlight was starting to stream into the living room and the day had started. He was obviously well enough to have gotten out, or at least desperate enough, she frowned at the latter thought. It didn't matter, she needed to get herself and Dawn ready for school in two hours' time and then deal with whatever is being handed out to her.  
  
~ 


End file.
